CHOCOLATE THE DOG

So my good friend's mother's birthday is coming, and she didn't know what to get for her. To support me at the same time, she asked me to make their dog, Chocolate, for her mum as a custom order. We were quite excited, discussing how it should be, and how I can make Chocolate's toys too.

After much discussion, we settled for a snow globe, with Chocolate's toys floating about. Here's the final product!

Now my friend and I went out and looked for suitable jars or containers that might do the job. Thanks to Art Friend (where else), we manage to find one. However, turns out the container magnify the items inside quite a bit LOL. Must be because it was plastic, and not glass hahaha. I thought it might happen, but honestly didn't know it'd be so huge!

Here's the original size compared to that in the container.

Since we're on Chocolate, here's the photos my friend sent to me as reference. (Click on the arrows to see the different pictures)

ISN'T HE ADORABLE AND FLUFFEHHHH!! GFDKAHJGFKAWUSOKEWT.

But because he was so fluffly, I had trouble "sculpting" his fur. Here's the photos of the failed one.

On the left was the base I did before I "put on" its "fur". On the right is the head with liquid clay + paint fur without baking. I mixed them together and it became clumpy, which I thought will look like small curls.

I thought it looked better after baking since the "clumps" were "smoothed out" a little, and ET approved it too. But there were a couple of problems.

When I showed it to my friend, she mentioned that it looks like there's things growing out of it instead of fluffy............and after she said that, I couldn't un-see it T.T

The colour looks a bit off compared to the real Chocolate in the photo. Looks like poop LOL.

The glaze wasn't dried properly (before I got the dry cabinet), which means it was sticky.

And somehow the glaze also discoloured it?? If you look at the bottom right photo, the head of clay Chocolate looks greyer because it was discoloured. It got progressively worse as time goes by.

So the first thing I thought was to just redo it. It made me unhappy.

Then I tried out different ways of doing it.

On the left I tried making it maggi-mee style LOL but I think it was too harsh for my taste.

Then I tried making the "clumps" bigger and smoother like the picture on the right, thinking I can try making it like those cartoon sheeps where they just put on balls. I was gonna go with it but then I tried texturing it on the dog itself with a different method other than poking it and I thought it worked better. Hence that's how I got to the final clay Chocolate.

I think there's definitely room for more improvement, but my friend really liked it so I decided to go with it.

Here's the toys I made for clay Chocolate!

And the following photos are the pictures my friend sent me as reference! (Click on the arrows to go to the next or previous photo)

Now this is my first time making a snow globe (or snow container lol) type of thing, so I had to go through quite a bit of test and trial. My friend figured out what's in snow globes to make the glitter move slowly in the globe before I even started researching haha. It was glycerin, and I tested so many times and so much that I finish one whole bottle and barely had enough for the actual thing lol.

It took me awhile because initially I tried to put both glitter and the toys inside. But if the glycerin was too little compared to the amount of water, the clay toys floats down too quickly (probably because it's too heavy/denser). And when I put more glycerin, the glitter just stayed wherever they were at and doesn't float at all LOL. So I had to omit the glitter. I thought it was for the better too, since the container magnifies everything and if there's also glitter it will look too cluttered.

Also, glycerin is a pain in the ass to work with LOL especially with large amounts because it's so...slimy? Apparently it's also used as a moisturiser for dry hands, and they even say to use VERY little amount. Imagine me with my overturned glycerin bottle......

I had trouble closing the bottle too for the final touch due to overflowing hahaha. I had to use cling wrap to wrap it so it doesn't leak out, and because I filled it a little over the brim, some of them overflowed......SLIMEHHH.

I quite like the end product though. If I have another chance to do this, I'll try to get glass bottle instead.

Here's a video of it with the floating toys! ^^

Thank you Ember for giving me this chance to make something different and being so straightforward! <3